2003-09-05 04:00:00 PDT Paris -- The leaders of France and Germany on Thursday criticized as insufficient the Bush administration's draft United Nations resolution seeking to give the world body a greater role in Iraq's security and reconstruction.

Speaking in the German city of Dresden, the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, said the current draft of the U.S. resolution failed to meet their primary concerns -- that political authority in Iraq be transferred to Iraqis as quickly as possible and that the United Nations, not the United States, take over the key role in postwar rebuilding.

"We are ready to examine the proposals, but they seem quite far from what for us is the primary objective, that is, the transfer of political responsibility to an Iraqi government as rapidly as possible," said Chirac.

Schroeder, at Chirac's side, said that the new American draft resolution showed that "there is movement," but he added, "It is not dynamic enough. It doesn't go far enough."

"Now is the time to bring stability to the country, and that can only be achieved if the United Nations takes full charge of the political process," he said.

Analysts pointed out that there were still almost three weeks left until the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, and a compromise could still be worked out.

Chirac said that France would study the resolution "in the most positive manner possible," and that France and Germany would work "in full collaboration" to amend it to reflect their concerns.

A senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said German officials had contacted the State Department after the comments from Schroeder and Chirac became public to say that Schroeder's comments weren't meant to be negative.

The U.S. draft has not yet been formally submitted to the Security Council, which will meet today for its first informal discussion of the proposals.

The position of France, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, is seen as key, along with that of Russia, to achieving a new resolution that would alleviate some of the financial and military burden on the United States,

which now finds itself facing the costly and increasingly dangerous job of occupying Iraq with relatively few allies to share the burden.

OTHER NATIONS RELUCTANT

Britain, the only major U.S. ally during the war, still has more than 10, 000 troops in southern Iraq, and Poland is leading a 2,300-member contingent from several countries. But other nations with large armed forces and capable of sending troops -- notably India, Pakistan and Turkey -- are reluctant to get involved without a new Security Council resolution transferring substantial authority from the United States to the world body.

Russia's defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, said Thursday that Moscow would be willing to send some peacekeeping troops, but only under a new U.N. resolution.

British officials, concerned that the security situation in Iraq is rapidly deteriorating, said they were considering a sizable increase in ground forces there.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in confidential notes drawn up for a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair and reported by the Daily Telegraph newspaper, suggested sending an extra brigade of 5,000 soldiers to help improve security and demonstrate Britain's resolve.

U.S. MODELS PLAN ON PAST

The draft resolution being circulated in New York would create a kind of hybrid structure modeled after past U.N. operations in East Timor and the Korean War, where an American commander would lead a multinational military force with the United Nations' formal backing.

But opponents of the war, including France and Germany, have been concerned about endorsing any resolution that created, in effect, a veneer of U.N. legitimacy for an operation that would still remain essentially under U.S. control.

At stake is a question of principle, according to analysts in Europe. European governments, whose populations largely opposed the invasion of Iraq in the first place, would find it difficult to send troops into an increasingly hostile combat zone without a genuine U.N. mandate and control over the operation.

The problem has been exacerbated by the recent spate of increasingly violent attacks in Iraq, such as the car bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed its top diplomat, Sergio Vieira de Mello, and last week's deadly car bombing in Najaf that killed a leading Iraqi cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.

IRAQ SEEN AS TOO RISKY

"Things have gotten so bad in Iraq, the real question is how do you tempt people to go there," said Francois Heisbourg, a French defense analyst. "The level of risk in Iraq is considered to be much higher than it was two months ago. If the Americans had come up with this draft in, say, July, it would have found a much more positive reaction."

The U.S. proposal that would leave the military operation and much of the political reconstruction in American hands is "probably not doable," Heisbourg said. "There's going to be a hesitation about committing forces to an operation that is both high risk and difficult to explain."

Also at stake are commercial interests, some analysts said. The postwar rebuilding of Iraq is likely to be lucrative, and to encourage other countries to share the dangers and the risks, the United States would also have to be willing to share some of the private reconstruction contracts.